Quotes About Ethics

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928) You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

Look, whatever you do in life, remember, think higher and feel deeper. It cannot be bad if you do that.

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim

How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?

No commandment surpasses the one concerning the liberation of hostages, for they are among the starving, the thirsting, the stripped, always in danger of death.

When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.

I believe it was Jean Améry who noted that the first to bow to the oppressor's system and to adopt its doctrines and methods were the intellectuals. But not all of them. Not the rabbis and priests, who, after all, were intellectuals too. With a single exception, no rabbi agreed to become a kapo. All refused to barter their own survival by becoming tools of the hangman. All preferred to die rather than serve death. The lessons of the prophets and the sages became shields for them. On

Once we begin to regard the well-being of others as integral to our own, we overcome the paralysis of competing rights, which rationalizes innocent suffering.

I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

How was it possible that men, women, and children are being burned and that the world kept silent?

Every murder is a suicide.

Je me souvenais de ce que mon vieux maître à la barbe jaunie m'avait dit un jour en m'expliquant le sixième commandement: pourquoi un homme n'aurait-il pas le droit de tuer? En tuant, expliquait-il, l'homme devient Dieu. Et nous n'avons pas le droit de le devenir trop facilement.

Do not hang a young man whose only crime is fidelity to his ideal

I remember he asked his father, "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?" And

So I wrote this novel in order to explore distant memories and buried doubts: What would have become of me if I had spent not just one year in the camps, but two or four? If I had been appointed kapo? Could I have struck a friend? Humiliated an old man? And

If today I am only a question mark, he is responsible.

Could men and women who consider it normal to assist the weak, to heal the sick, to protect small children, and to respect the wisdom of their elders understand what happened there? Would they be able to comprehend how, within that cursed universe, the masters tortured the weak and massacred the children, the sick, and the old?

An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers.

Our ethics are not meant to be created in our childhoods and shoved in a box somewhere; they must be reshaped daily, as we encounter scenarios that challenge our beliefs.

most of us turn to religion for our ethics because we don't know where else to find them.

Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?" And